My Christmas gift/New Year’s resolution for myself

Following through on something I mentioned a while ago, I’ve decided to sign up for the Russian Reading Challenge 2008. The post title comes from the fact I view reading as always a gift to myself and the challenge requires me to resolve to get certain books read. Besides, it fits in with the foreign fiction fixation I’ve developed.

The challenge only requires four books over the course of 2008 by authors who wrote (write) in Russian or authors who wrote (write) about Russia and Russians. Only four books are required because Russian novels tend to be quite long (think War and Peace, Crime and Punishment, etc.) and the challenge recognizes we have other things to do. Still, I may read more than four as I’ve got a couple shorter novels on the list of candidates and may end up counting two short novels as one.

The list, which is subject to change on varying whims, also seeks to go from classic to modern works. The candidates, in no particular order, are:

Some things lead beyond words. Art inflames even a frozen, darkened soul to a high spiritual experience. Through art we are sometimes visited – dimly, briefly – by revelations such as cannot be produced by rational thinking.

I hadn’t heard of the Russian Reading Challenge – it’s such a nice idea! In the meanwhile, I thought you may be interested in the review of Soul that Elif Batuman just wrote for the New York Sun, under the title “Romancing the Locomotive”:http://www.nysun.com/article/68544
Happy reading!